In the late 1840's, a doctor named Ignaz Semmelweis was studying mortality rates associated with child birth. His intention was to find more effective ways to preserve the lives of both newborns and their mothers. After looking at the problem for a while, and proposing several inaccurate causes and flawed solutions, he stumbled onto the idea that "hand washing" using a sanitizing agent was a possible solution to the problem. However, his solution created a new problem; he had no authority to require anyone to wash their hands. Back then, appealing to some governing board or legislature was not always an easy task. Because Dr. Semmelweis was neither popular enough nor well-connected enough to promulgate the needed change, mothers and children continued to die for decades. One hundred and seventy-seven years later, across the pond, scientist and ordinary thinkers find themselves in a similarly peculiar situation. Only today, the problem is not hand washing before and after surgery.
In 1956, President Dwight D. Eisenhower put the full weight of his office, as President of the United States, behind the concept of an interstate highway system. A complex grid of connectivity that would allow America's businesses and families to freely move from city to city and state to state. Imagine the audacity to assume that people in California wanted to be connected to the east coast by interstate highways. Imagine the confidence required to convince people in Austin, TX that it was in their best interested to have a highway connecting them to people in Minneapolis, MN. That interstate highway system came to be the envy of the world and an economic boon for the United States of America. One of the unexpected results of more cars moving at higher rates of speed was higher auto fatality rates. Solution? In January 1968, the federal government passed a law making it mandatory for auto manufacturers to include seatbelts in every vehicle, except buses. Not surprisingly, this requirement on manufacturers did very little to increase seatbelt usage. It was not until 15 years later (1983), that laws were passed to require front seat passengers to wear seatbelts. A law requiring the buckling of children under 14 was not required until 6 years later in 1989. However, it wasn't long until car manufacturers began selling and marketing safety. It turned out that Americans, once given the option, were willing to pay extra for unlimited airbags, anti-lock brakes, crumple zones, sensors in bumpers to detect objects before potential impact, and even cameras. All this, in the name of safety. Seems almost implausible that the same people would look at their neighbors, friends, and countrymen dying in increasing numbers by gunshots and say "man, that's a shame. It's too bad we can't do anything about that".
In 1982, an unknown person in the Chicago area set out to intentionally poison people. Over a period of just a few months, several consumers were poisoned by consuming Tylenol, an over-the-counter pain medication. The person or persons involved in this crime were never caught. However, that did not prevent American manufacturers from completely revamping the way that over-the counter medications were packaged. In fact, products without a single poisoning incident attached to their brand, voluntarily and preemptively changed their packaging procedures. Those changes in packaging and processing have continued to evolve over the years. In 2017, when outbreaks of poisoning occur in the U.S., within days the Food and Drug Administration is able to give Americans a very detailed report: place manufactured, suppliers or ingredients used to manufacture, other brands that could be impacted, and geographic hot spots which might still contain the tainted products. Progress! It seems hard to imagine a country that would have done nothing the past 25 years, except wait patiently for the next food or drug poisoning to occur.
In 1995, a man named Timothy McVeigh drove a Ryder truck to Oklahoma City. Inside the truck, he had placed 4000 lbs. of ammonium nitrate fertilizer in barrels. By successfully detonating those ingredients in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal building, he killed 168 people and injured hundreds more. The very next day, the President of the United States ordered the Department of Justice to conduct a vulnerability study of ALL federal facilities. From that study, Minimum Security Standards were created: standoff distances were introduced, shatter-resistant glass, building access control, magnetometers and X-ray machines at some locations, as well as armed guards at others. Buildings were prioritized and changes made according to risk and vulnerability. Literally millions of tax dollars were allocated for ongoing security changes and very few voices dissented. Stop for a moment and imagine if nothing had been done. Imagine thousands of Americans being killed each year by truck bombs. Unthinkable!
In 2001, a man named Osama Bin Laden masterminded the hijacking of 4 airplanes. Three of those airplanes were successfully crashed into buildings in New York and Washington D.C. One was crashed in Shanksville, PA and did not successfully reach its intended target. The list of changes that have been made to prevent such a tragedy from ever occurring again is too long to fully detail. In fact, without a certain level of security clearance some of the changes that were made cannot even be fully known. The changes that impact travelers seem pretty obvious: ticketing procedures, check-in identification procedures, screening of passengers, screening of baggage, electronics inspections, standing in line with no shoes on, and a list of toiletries which cannot exceed certain small quantities. These are not all things that happened simultaneously. Rather, over time, as perceived threats to airline travel have evolved, new changes have been introduced and adopted. The airlines themselves, in cooperation with federal regulators, have made substantial changes: from cockpit retrofitting, changes in the scope and role of air marshals, and some changes not yet fully disclosed to the public. All these things were accomplished, not without wrangling and disagreement, but in the name of public safety. Try to imagine a world where 16 years later, literally nothing had changed.
In my America, a single person can legally amass and conveniently transport 50 weapons. This same person can legally amass thousands of rounds of ammunition. Then one day, without warning, this person can cause millions of dollars in bodily injury, lost productivity, lost earning potential, future security cost, and a cascade of tangential damage so wide-ranging as to be literally incalculable. As of today, we simply accept this repeating scenario on a weekly or monthly basis, as our unavoidable norm. We have become helpless and lost, dealing with an issue the rest of the globe has yet to encounter. I would submit today that this growing threat is an existential one. We are a society so imbibed by our own concepts of freedom and declared superiority (as we are currently making ourselves great again) that we sit frozen, as the economic realities of our freedoms bankrupt us. We are so punch-drunk over the fantasy of good guys and bad guys, that we fail to understand an ages-old reality going back to Biblical times. That reality is this: good and evil co-exist.
FACT: Sixty-four years is 23,360 days. In the Las Vegas shooting, 23,359 days of good guy was replaced by one day of bad guy. More importantly, even if the good guy departed much earlier and his evil replacement continued to move through life as if nothing had changed, we have zero systems in place to detect that. NONE!
In the coming weeks and months, the debate over gun safety and gun control will rage once again. Ironically, at the same time, we will be having a conversation about American healthcare cost; which is more than twice that of any other industrialized nation. Someone will inevitably point out that cancer and diabetes kill far more people than gun violence. That same someone will, either knowingly or unknowingly, omit the fact that our congress has not made it illegal for the Centers for Disease Control to study the effect of cancer and diabetes on America's healthcare system. That distinction is reserved for our favorite freedom: GUNS. While healthier lifestyles will certainly do much more to curb skyrocketing healthcare cost than scores of new gun laws. I, for one, cannot help but think there is a connection between the struggling emergency care facilities in many cities and towns, and the predictably high cost of our constantly improving tactical equipment and the gunshot wounds that go hand-in-hand with our unquenchable thirst for the latest and greatest in lethality.
We, Americans, seem to have concluded that the freedom of gun owners knows no bounds. Meanwhile, the ability of communities to have safe schools, churches, malls, and movie theaters takes a backseat to MY 100%, unquestionable, freedom to open carry the assault rifle of my choice. Well, maybe not me actually, but definitely my lighter colored friends. This whole thing gets a little convoluted and confusing when we look too closely at it. It turns out that 12 year old boys can be legally shot for playing with toy versions of the guns that are perfectly legal to carry in open-carry states. It also turns out that young men can be legally shot for simply holding a display model (of the BB variety), of a rifle sold in Wal Mart stores, in an open carry state. So just to be crystal clear, some Americans have an unlimited and undeniable right to carry guns and ammunition, with yet to be determined or disclosed levels of lethality, at will. Meanwhile, at the same time, in the same states, it is legal to shoot other Americans if they are suspected of possessing (much less concealing or carrying) toy versions of those same weapons.
Does anyone else see how the instructions to this game may be unintentionally creating bad outcomes? I think we, Americans, may be leaving our fellow citizens with the false impression that it is not only permissible to shoot other Americans; but in certain circumstances it may be fully legal and without consequences. Not the type of message, tacit or implied, that bodes well left to the interpretation of more than 300 million people.
